So, I just finished watching The Sopranos (yeah, nothing like coming a bit late to the party, right?) Really enjoyed it, had no problem with the ending (I had a bigger problem with AJ suddenly becoming a major character in S6 (and thereby burning major screen time with his whiny crap) than I did with the final 15 seconds of the show), and I can see why it is considered an all-time great.
But… just how realistic is the open violence? We see a professor get assaulted and kidnapped in front of his class w/o consequence, guys driven down and beat up on the sides of busy streets, people get shot openly - in bars, convenience stores, restaurants, - while in a suburban neighborhood, Paulie just kicks the ever-living shiite out of somebody because of a lawn-mowing dispute, etc.
Was this a common occurrence in Northern New Jersey from 1999-2007? Did (and do) people look out their window in calm suburban streets, see their lawnmower guy get attacked, and say “mob dispute, better stay out of it?”
I’m inclined to say bullshit, it’s all done for effect, that maybe a culture that existed in 1947 is being transplanted to 2007… but having never lived there, I wouldn’t know for sure.
And if you want to bitch about the ending again, feel free. It’s been awhile since it has been discussed and I’m sure the pain has bubbled up again.
Common - no, but that could be said of any TV show based on true stories. But it has, and still does, happen. Not so much the shootings, as they get investigated. And not only Italian mafia. The Orthodox Jewish mafia pay off the police so they can patrol their own neighborhoods in Brooklyn (of course, they don’t consider themselves mafia, just upstanding citizens looking after their own neighborhood with police-supported citizen patrols that take care of certain problems ‘in-house’). No one ever sees gang violence that happens right in front of them. Witness tampering is rampant in gang overrun communities, to the point that no one wants to be a witness.
I live one town north of two old-time mob towns - literally the places that the Goodfellas conducted a lot of their business. The numbers have been declining over the years, but rest assured that what might seem like over-the-top characters in The Sopranos are not.
I grew up in the very neighborhood the Sopranos were supposed to live in, about a mile from the house they used for exterior shots. I never once saw anybody get attacked without some kind of immediate consequence. Most of those were ridiculous teenage throw-downs at the diner that brought the cops in five minutes. It’s possible that I somehow missed our lawn guy or mail carrier get curb-stomped, but unlikely.
Did I know a lot of people in my high school that had Tony Soprano-esque uncles? Absolutely. But the Mafia itself was just a vague idea in my head, certainly one I never thought about being close to home until the show aired. That probably says far more, however, about me being an oblivious teenager than it does about the actual discretion of any local gangsters.
I’m now picturing the famous episode where Tony is trying to kill a guy without Meadow noticing what her father does for a living, except you’re playing Meadow.
I mean it’s TV, but the Italian mafia does generate a lot of actual crimes.
If you look at Crime Maps of Richmond VA (I live right outside) you’ll see little pins showing assaults, burglaries etc all over the place. In many years of time spent in downtown Richmond I may have seen a few times people fighting, usually in what appeared to be a young male mutual combat.
There’s around 40 murders a year in Richmond, which would easily fill the episodes of the Sopranos (whose murders were spread around all of New Jersey and sometimes other places so not in one place), and I’ve certainly never witnessed a murder.
I guess my point is we know the mafia is real, and we know they kill people and run tons of illegal activities. I very seriously doubt they don’t assault people all the time.
The DiMeo family in The Sopranos is based on the DeCavalcante family, which was the major Italian mafia family in New Jersey (which, like the DiMeo family, had an allegiance with the Five Families of New York.) In the early 2000s 20 of them were arrested for involvement in 14 murders, among other things, and that was out of an estimated 40 or some members who were “made guys” and a couple hundred associates. Subsequently that crime family appears to be pretty diminished now, and the New York five families are now more prominent in New Jersey
All organized Italian crime families in America are much diminished from where they were 40-50 years ago, but considering the known murders these guys still get charged with and all the criminal activities they’re involved in I think while the Sopranos was clearly fiction and not meant to be a docudrama I suspect the real life mafia types during 1999-2007 left plenty of dead bodies.
The “org” charts the feds put out, complete with “former” members with black tape on their pics, are amazing. The death rate in that business is stupefying. I don’t understand why people join a group where the most likely outcome is being whacked and the next most likely is doing hard time.
I knew there was a whole lot of murderin’ going on and I felt the show accurately captured what you said, ftg about the eventual hopelessness and stress of the life, but, in the same show the amount of daylight open violence, with no recon (there could be a cop around the corner), no forethought, and no consequences seemed a little far-fetched. After all, it’s not as if Paulie was hard to describe or anything.
Generally, people think they’re smarter, stronger, faster, or otherwise better than the guys getting knocked off. If you think you’re smart enough to avoid the cops and strong enough not to be the one getting whacked, you can make pallets of money and wield immense personal power. It’s very common for people to think that they will be the one to rise to the top and ignore the statistics.
I remember the episode where an eyewitness to a murder recanted his statement to the cops after reading about the Soprano Family in the paper. Seemed very believable to me.
A couple of thugs drive up over the curb in an SUV and then start kicking the shit of a guy right in front of you. Whatchu gonna do, whip out your mobile and dial 911?!? :dubious:
I’d like to think I’d help the guy, but shit, I could at least run 10 seconds around the corner and then call 911.
And then take the guys picture - the Soprano’s didn’t have to worry about all these damned cameras everywhere. It’s easier beating the shit out of people when everybody around you didn’t have 5 megapixel HD cameras in their hands.
Agreed. And there is considerable evidence (both direct and implied) throughout the series that most of the characters are not very intelligent, despite their strong belief to the contrary.
I’m not disputing anything in your post, but my impression of the OP was the focus on “open”. I too found my suspension of disbelief tested in some of these scenes. One in particular stood out: the very out in the open beating of a guy outside his boring insurance company office park building, with plenty of witnesses.
I understand that there are neighborhoods where witnesses don’t cooperate. But I don’t think a suburban office park filled with professional office workers are one of those. Here we have an attempt to mow him down with a car and a beating to a pulp in front of a lot of witnesses. Is New Jersey really so lawless and corrupt that a bunch of 911 calls from the shocked colleagues (witnessing perhaps the most exciting thing in their lives) would have no significant consequences?
Probably the least realistic thing about the Sopranos is that much of the violence mentioned by the thread is carried out directly by the boss (Tony), consigliere (Silvio), and the various capos who tended to come and go throughout the series. The only major character on the show who would have regularly gotten his hands dirty IRL would have been Christopher, and even he would have delegated much more after getting his button.
The professional office workers in the suburban office parks respond to intimidation and threats too. Mafia and gangs rely on their ruthlessness; they don’t just threaten, they follow through. It doesn’t take many coerced witnesses to keep everyone quiet. Charges will be filed, grand juries convened, but in the end cases get dropped because of this.
This is precisely my question, thanks for the clarification.
Yes, the mob commits a lot of crimes, kills a lot of people behind closed doors, at night, while hidden… I get that.
The OP is about whether the out-in-the-open, in broad daylight with tens, hundreds of witnesses-type violence in the Soprano’s is normal or exaggerated. I’ve spent a few weeks in NNJ (Nutley, Bloomfield, where my wife’s family is from) and it didn’t really strike me as Somalia or anything.
For the 10 weeks a season an HBO show runs, it makes it seem like this sort of thing is a weekly occurrence. It’s not. It’s an anomaly when and if something happens because, though dumb, they tend not to be that dumb…unless it was one of the Gotti kids down in Howard Beach. They would keep getting into trouble, it would make the local (Queens) papers, might make the local (NYC) news, but (a) no journalist/editor cared enough to follow up, and (b) no jail time, usually no trial. Obviously we’re not talking about murder. And even with them, it was more like they might hit the news every other year or so rather than twice a season. This was a while back, though, and I’m pretty sure they moved away from here.
